Book Reviews

Gift Ideas for Young Readers

And some memoirs that are decidedly adult

BYCAROLINEMCCULLAGH

HAPPY HOLIDAYS to all my readers, no matter what you celebrate.

Usually holiday books are Christmas-themed. Only one such book came in this year, so I thought I’d also mention two children’s books that, though not holiday-themed, would make nice gifts.

I sure wish some of you writers would get busy and send me some non-Christmas holiday books. There’s your assignment. You have a year!

Raja’s Pet Camel: The Magic of Hope, written by Anita Nahta Amin and illustrated by Parwinder Singh, is a delightful book to read and discuss with your pre-readers and early readers. Raja, a young boy in India on his way home from school, finds an abandoned baby camel. Kamal follows him home, and Raja’s father says she can stay. But Kamal’s like a toddler. She’s uncontrollable and makes a lot of trouble for the family, so Raja’s father determines to sell her at the next fair. What do you think will happen?

The story is good, and it gives children a glimpse into another way of life. It’s productive to let them know there’s more in the world than what they see on TV. As a bonus, the author includes a series of topics you can discuss with your children before and after you read the book together. The illustrations are bright and appealing too. I enjoyed this book. Visit AnitaAminBooks.com.

Runtie the Desert Rat, written by Sharon Winters (who also wrote Karl’s Diary, up later) and illustrated by Toby Mikle, is another appealing book to share with a child. I’m not as enamored by the subtext (the moral of the story) as I was with Raja’s Pet Camel. This is sort of a modern-day myth. Runtie, whose real name is Leilani, is the smallest of her family. Her many siblings taunt her for being small and don’t play with her. She meets a magic flower who gives her a wish. She wants to be able to run faster than her siblings so they will respect and like her. The flower grants her wish and gives her huge feet. She becomes the first kangaroo rat, and her siblings reform their ways.

Ignoring the question of Lamarckism — we are Mensans, after all — I’m ambivalent about the message. This story is similar in a way to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It says that it’s the responsibility of the child who is bullied and treated as “less than” to work harder to gain approval and that ultimately, the solution lies in a magic gift. Unfortunately, not every child will be offered a magic gift. I guess that’s a deep critique of a light and charming book…. Also, I’d like to see those siblings get their comeuppance! Visit SharonWinters.com.

Santa in Love by an author whose pen name is Isabella Gallo is a fairly standard G-rated romance. This is the author’s first book but the second to be published. From my perspective as a reviewer, it’s interesting to compare it to the other, reviewed in March, to see how much the author progressed in her craft. The answer is a lot. Her first published/second written book is Teddy Bear Whisperer by Jocelyn O’Connor (another pen name).

The plot of Santa in Love is definitely Hallmark. Ruggedly handsome and almost 30, Evan sells his successful remodeling business in Chicago and comes home to help his dad, also a contractor. Evan is looking for a wife — be still, my heart — and who does he meet when he’s working as Santa in a department store but Molly, an almost-spinster, who just happens to have a huge historic house in need of major remodeling. That’s about as deep as the plot gets.

This author may actually have a future in writing romances. Her plot and characters are well thought out. Where she falls down is in the show-don’t-tell department. If you want to read a cute Christmas romance, go for Teddy Bear Whisperer.

From time to time, I receive a book that is almost indescribable. Some are indescribably bad, but some, such as Conquer Life’s

Frontiers: A Philosophy of Individual Fulfillment by Spero T. Lappas, are a joy to read. Ostensibly, this is a self-help book. But the lessons for life improvement it provides are wrapped up in an interesting memoir and a travel book that absolutely has you sitting with him in that pub in Florence, Italy, or in that taverna in Aegina, Greece. And tied in with all that are some really interesting ideas on how you can choose whether you want to be a passive passenger on the train trip that is your life or whether you want something better.

Lappas, an excellent writer, seemed to be the man who had everything — a lucrative career, two successful children, the respect and admiration of his peers — and still he woke up unhappy every morning. He eventually realized that he had the ability to change that, and he set about to do it.

At first, I didn’t really like him as he presented himself in the book, but I realized that the person I didn’t like was his old persona. As he grew and changed, my respect and admiration

for him grew too. This book is too good to pass up just because it’s in a little box marked “self-help.”

Another outstanding memoir this month

is The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life by Anita Faye Garner. This is a fascinating story. If you read the first page, you might not be able to put it down. Nita Faye and her big brother, Leslie Ray, were the two junior members of the Jones Family Singers. Their parents, “Brother Ray” and “Sister Fern,” were both ordained Pentecostal ministers. Brother Ray was an itinerant preacher who had a talent for building up small churches, but his main ministry was through the music his family performed all over the South, anywhere from street corners to tent revivals.

If that’s all you were to tell me about this book, I would think: dedicated people having happy and purposeful lives. Well, that’s not quite the way Nita Faye remembers it. There was always tension. She and Ray knew they were living a different kind of life from all their cousins and other kids they saw because of their mother’s ambition to become a commercial success in the gospel music world. They lived a good portion of their childhood in the backseat of the family car, as they traveled from performance to performance.

This world is as foreign and as interesting to me as India in Raja’s Pet Camel. And I can tell you that Garner is one heck of a writer. Don’t miss this one. Visit AnitaGarner.com.

Sharon Winters, who wrote Runtie the Desert Rat, also sent in Karl’s Diary: It’s a Dog’s Life. There are three kinds of people in the world: those who think of dogs as dogs, those who think of them as little furry children, and those who don’t think of them at all. I’ve had dogs all my life, but I think it’s a lot more likely that I’m a big hairless dog than that they are little furry people. Winters is the second kind. In this diary, purportedly written by Karl, she and her husband are called Mommy and Daddy. If that kind of thing is off-putting to you, then this isn’t the book for you.

Even though this is short — only 60 pages — and there are many dog photos, it’s for adult dog lovers, not children, and there’s some real meat here under the kibble. I have to admit I had a tear in my eye at the end. Ultimately, it’s as much Winters’ memoir as it is Karl’s.

Every book has a readership somewhere,

but A Rainy Day in Heaven by Joe Poett might struggle to find its audience. It’s a very well-written memoir of his early childhood in the 1960s in a Catholic family headed by a severely abusive alcoholic father and a mother who’s just trying to keep her head above water as she has baby after baby. Childhood memoirs are difficult to write for several reasons. Memories fade, and our minds often edit, conflate, or delete them. Also, childhood memories are overlaid with adult interpretation and reinterpretation as we mature and have a greater understanding of life. Finally, the biggest problem when writing a memoir of childhood is choosing a voice in which to write. Poett has chosen to write this as narrative nonfiction using the boy (himself) as the narrator. This narrator describes thoughts, feelings, observations, and even wordfor-word dialogue. But the boy has vocabulary and concepts that are way too mature for the ages he purports to be in each succeeding chapter.

I found this book distasteful. It opens with a scene of his mother changing her “lady diaper” in the stall of a public restroom with the boy and his older sister present. It closes with a litany of the destroyed lives that his father’s alcoholism has left in subsequent generations. I’m sorry Poett had to live through these experiences, but it’s not something I want to read about.

Find Caroline’s writings at CarolineMcCullaghAuthor.com.

Unless indicated otherwise, all books reviewed are authored or co-authored by current Mensans, though sometimes using pseudonyms. To submit a book for review, send a review copy and submission form (you can download it from AmericanMensa.org/bookreviews or request it from BulletinEditor@americanmensa.org) to: Caroline McCullagh, Page Turners Editor 3461 Taos Place San Diego, CA 92117

GIFTED EDUCATION FELLOWSHIP

The Foundation’s Gifted Education Fellowship – with a value of $5,000 – is intended to assist outstanding educators in acquiring a graduate degree in gifted education or a closely related field from an accredited institution of higher education. For more information and to apply, visit MensaFoundation.org/GEFellowship.